A Case of (Decreasing) American Exceptionalism: Single-Family Zoning in the United States, Australia, and Canada

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Andrew H. Whittemore ◽  
William Curran-Groome
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
The United States ◽  
Single Family

Deafness and Ethnic Identity: The Idea of a Deaf State and its Resonances with American Exceptionalism and Frontier Ideology

2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-90
Author(s):  
Marion Rana
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
Manifest Destiny ◽  
The United States ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Deaf Identity ◽  
American Nation

Abstract This article focuses on the nineteenth century as a pivotal time for the development of a Deaf identity in the United States and examines the way John Jacob Flournoy’s idea of a “Deaf-Mute Commonwealth” touches upon core themes of American culture studies and history. In employing pivotal democratic ideas such as egalitarianism, liberty, and self-representation as well as elements of manifest destiny such as exceptionalism and the frontier ideology in order to raise support for a Deaf State, the creation and perpetuation of a Deaf identity bears strong similarities to the processes of American nation-building. This article will show how the endeavor to found a Deaf state was indicative of the separationist and secessionist movements in the United States at that time, and remains relevant to Deaf group identity today.

City on a Hill: American Exceptionalism and the Elect Nation

2000 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 299-318
Author(s):  
J. R. Oldfield
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Elementary School ◽  
South Carolina ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Anthem ◽  
Pledge Of Allegiance ◽  
American Flag

Some years ago I was invited to spend a day in an elementary school in Columbia, South Carolina. The day began, as I imagine every day began, with the national anthem and the pledge of allegiance to the American flag. The children then sang a song, a ditty really, which began as it ended with the simple refrain: ‘I am special’. Later I was shown some of the work the class had been doing. Across the back of the room were pinned up the children’s attempts to answer a question that had been exercising me, namely what was special about the United States. Some of the responses were fairly predictable. America was special, one seven-year-old wrote, because it was a democracy. Others singled out freedom or liberty as their country’s unique virtue. One brave soul boldly asserted that America was special because Americans were rich, while another thought the secret had something to do with happiness.

Filming Hegemony: Hollywood and the Manichean Script of Geopolitics

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Georg Löfflmann
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
National Security ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
The United States ◽  
External Threats ◽  
Hollywood Movies ◽  
American Hegemony ◽  
Film Productions

The chapter focuses on popular culture as key site for the production of constructs of geopolitical identity and practices of national security as common sense knowledge and conventional wisdom, examining popular Hollywood movies of the ‘national security cinema’ and the involvement of the Pentagon in the filmmaking process. Representations of geopolitical identity and national security are analyzed in some of the commercially most successful films in the United States released between 2009 and 2015. The chapter’s analysis testifies to the enduring popularity of key ideational themes and mythologies, such as American exceptionalism, military heroism, and external threats endangering the existence of the United States, its interests and values under the Obama presidency. The serial reproduction of these national security narratives, realized in multi-million dollar film productions, illustrates the cross-discursive leverage of American hegemony over alternative formulations of grand strategy under the Obama presidency and the popularity of a particular national security imagery of American geopolitical identity.

‘Smoked Yankees’, ‘Wild’ Catholics and the Newspaper ‘Lions’ of Manila

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Shott
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African Americans ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
Manifest Destiny ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Scientific Racism ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Fault Lines

When the United States declared war on Spain in 1898, American troops battled Spanish forces in Cuba and across the Pacific in Spain’s longtime colony, the Philippines. There, American troops initially fought alongside Filipino rebels, but after the defeat of Spanish forces the United States annexed the islands and fighting broke out between the rebels and their new occupiers. American soldiers, including nearly 6,000 African Americans, struggled to understand their adversaries, employing varied conceptual frames that mixed scientific racism, the notion of Manifest Destiny, and American exceptionalism and that encompassed long-standing fault lines in American identity, including religion. The chapter draws material from diaries of soldiers, black and ethnic newspaper presses, and diplomatic sources to describe a potent but ephemeral mix of racialist thinking during and immediately after the Philippine-American War.

From American Exceptionalism to the Great Compression

2021 ◽  
pp. 323-350
Author(s):  
Jon D. Wisman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic Growth ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
The United States ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
World War ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
First Time

The United States was an anomaly, beginning without clear class distinctions and with substantial egalitarian sentiment. Inexpensive land meant workers who were not enslaved were relatively free. However, as the frontier closed and industrialization took off after the Civil War, inequality soared and workers increasingly lost control over their workplaces. Worker agitation led to improved living standards, but gains were limited by the persuasiveness of the elite’s ideology. The hardships of the Great Depression, however, significantly delegitimated the elite’s ideology, resulting in substantially decreased inequality between the 1930s and 1970s. Robust economic growth following World War II and workers’ greater political power permitted unparalleled improvements in working-class living standards. By the 1960s, for the first time in history, a generation came of age without fear of dire material privation, generating among many of the young a dramatic change in values and attitudes, privileging social justice and self-realization over material concerns.

scholarly journals Cosmopolitanism, Patriotism, and Ecology

2012 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 15-26
Author(s):  
Nel Noddings
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Cooperation ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
The United States ◽  
The World

Increasing globalization brings with it an increased need for international cooperation and the possibility of renewed interest in cosmopolitanism. Teaching for –even about—cosmopolitanism raises problems for teachers all over the world, but it is especially difficult for teachers in the United States because of the current revival of pride in “American exceptionalism.” After a brief discussion of the possible benefits and risks in teaching cosmopolitanism, I will explore an approach that may decrease the risks and increase the benefits. This promising approach might be called “ecological cosmopolitanism” (Noddings 2012).

Intergenerational Occupational Mobility across Three Continents

2019 ◽  
Vol 79 (2) ◽  
pp. 383-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
Santiago Pérez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New World ◽  
Intergenerational Mobility ◽  
Occupational Mobility ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
The United States ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Nineteenth Century United States

I compare rates of intergenerational occupational mobility across four countries in the late nineteenth century: 1869–1895 Argentina, 1850–1880 United States, 1851–1881 Britain, and 1865–1900 Norway. Argentina and the United States had similar levels of intergenerational mobility, and these levels were above those of Britain and Norway. These findings suggest that the higher mobility of nineteenth-century United States relative to Britain might not have been a reflection of “American exceptionalism,” but rather a manifestation of more widespread differences between settler economies of the New World and Europe.

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